POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Bruins 3, Caps 1

It's All Too Much -Too early in their best-of-seven Stanley Cup Playoff set with the Boston Bruins, the Caps found themselves chasing the series. They couldn't catch up, and their season is over after Sunday's 3-1 loss to the B's at Capital One Arena.

After winning the opener of the series in overtime, the Caps dropped each of the next four. Although they scored only seven goals in the four losses, they played well enough to win two of those four - Games 2 and 3 - and held third period leads in both games.
On the morning of May 15's Game 1, we quoted Caps center Lars Eller in this space, discussing what it would take to win a first-round series against the Bruins. Here's what Eller said then:
"You can have games when you're not at your best but the games that you're playing well, you need to win those games because you're not going to play well every game. But the games where you are playing well and you have the win within your grasp, those are the ones you have to have. You have to be able to close those out. We need our best players to be our best players and we need key saves at key times and discipline and everything that goes with that."
Losing Games 2 and 3 hurts plenty in hindsight; third period leads need to be secured in the playoffs and letting them slip in consecutive games is rarely a recipe for advancing to the next round of the playoffs. If the Caps had found a way to close out even one of those games, their 2021 obituary would still be in the drafting stage.
But Washington never recovered from its Game 3 loss on a miscommunication behind its own net in double overtime. Beginning with Brad Marchand's tying goal on the power play in the third period of Game 3, Boston scored nine of the last 11 goals of the series and the Caps never held a lead on the scoreboard the rest of the way. The series was tight early, but it was all Bruins late.
In Game 1, the Caps limited Boston's top six forward group to a single power-play assist from David Pastrnak. Washington was unable to quiet that group the rest of the way; Boston's top six scored eight straight goals at one point from Games 2 to 4, and the B's top forward sextet had a hand in 12 of the last 13 goals in the series.
Although the Caps overcame a fair amount of adversity in what was a most trying, taxing and challenging season for every team and every player in the League, they weren't at their peak in this series against the Bruins. Their own top six and top nine forward group was a revolving and rotating bunch over the five games because of some nagging late-season injuries that appeared to linger into the playoffs.
Virtually half of the Washington roster missed time either late in the season or in the playoffs for a variety of reasons. That group included goaltenders Ilya Samsonov and Vitek Vanecek, defensemen John Carlson and Justin Schultz, centers Eller, Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov and wingers Ovechkin and T.J. Oshie. Several of those players appeared to be ailing as the Boston series wore on, though that's also true of virtually every player on every team at this stage of the season, as Backstrom himself noted in the wake of Game 5.
During the regular season, Washington featured the League's third-best power play. The Caps' total of 188 goals for at all strengths tied for fourth most in the circuit, Washington was fourth with 129 goals at 5-on-5, and its blueline group accounted for an average of 2.48 points per game, the most by any Caps defense corps since 1992-93.
Full marks must go to the Bruins, whose best players were its best players. The B's collectively neutralized virtually all of the Caps' offensive prowess in the five-game series. Washington scored only 10 goals, and it managed a combined total of two in the final two games. The Caps could manage only seven goals at 5-on-5 in the series, with five of them coming in the first two games.
Washington's extra-man unit was powerless to get the team started or to help it grab and sustain any momentum. The Bruins were shorthanded 21 times in the series, the most of any team in the playoffs and third most in terms of shorthanded situations per game (4.20). In each of the last three games of the series, the Caps had multiple power play opportunities while the game was still scoreless, a total of nine such chances in the three games. Only once - in Game 3 - were they able to score the game's first goal in that situation. In that instance, Alex Ovechkin scored on the Caps' fourth power play of the game midway through the second period, only to see Boston's Taylor Hall answer with the equalizer less than a minute later.
Fourth liners Nic Dowd and Garnet Hathaway combined for four of Washington's seven goals at seven strength, and the rest of the Caps' top players were too quiet at 5-on-5 echoing a familiar refrain of late. Dating back to the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Capitals have scored two or fewer goals in 13 of their last 18 postseason games, posting an unsurprising 4-13-1 record in the process.
The Caps' offense needn't shoulder all the blame. Washington defensemen made turnovers that ended up in the net at critical times in Games 2 and 3, team discipline - and general listlessness - let the Caps down in Game 4 and its goaltenders didn't come up with enough big saves in the big moments of the final four games, and didn't do so with enough regularity to help paper over the other issues.
Now, it's on to the offseason. Washington posted it fourth best regular season record in franchise history in 2020-21. Of the three previous Caps teams with better regular season records, one of them (2009-10) also bowed out in the first round while the other two (2015-16 and 2016-17) exited in the second round. All three of those other teams were Presidents' Trophy winners.
The Caps will now have a four-month offseason between now and the start of training camp for the 2021-22 season, which is expected to get underway in late September. They will lose one player to Seattle in the expansion draft this summer, and there will certainly be other roster adjustments, NHL free agency and the 2021 NHL Draft between now and then.
Washington was the NHL's oldest team in 2020-21, but it was unable to advance beyond the first round of the playoffs following a truncated 56-game regular season. The core of the Caps' team will be a year older and must also successfully navigate its way through another 82-game voyage between now and its next opportunity to chase the Cup.
Quick As Dreams - Conor Sheary scored the Caps' lone goal in Game 5, scoring on his own rebound just 11 seconds into the third period to cut the Bruins' lead to 2-1. Sheary's goal is now the fastest scored from the start of a period in the franchise's playoff history, beating the 34-year-old standard set by Mike Gartner, who scored 15 seconds into the first period of an April 8, 1987 first-round series against the New York Islanders.
By The Numbers -Ovechkin led the Caps with 25:08 in ice time and eight hits … Kuznetsov led the Caps with five shots on net and 10 shot attempts … Backstrom, Kuznetsov and Nick Jensen each had two blocked shots to lead Washington … Eller won 10 of 16 face-offs (63 percent).